When gas prices spiraled toward the stratosphere, car-rental companies saw a distinct change in their customers’ reservations strategies. Chris Payne, Dollar Thrifty’s senior manager of corporate communications, offered this explanation in an article on Direct magazine’s Web site:

“There are road warriors who like to get the best deal they can. [Before gas prices went up] they would reserve a smaller car than they really needed knowing we’d probably sell out and they’d get a bigger car at no extra cost. Now people are saying, ‘Wait a minute—I reserved a smaller car and you want to give me that gas guzzler? Forget it, I don’t want it.’”

The company, unable to make swift changes in its fleet, responded by creating a chart with which rental agents could assuage the concerns of their hesitant customers. According to Magill, “The chart shows gas usage and overall rental price differences model by model, based on a 100-mile round trip.” By demonstrating how an upgrade offered a significant increase in comfort without costing as much as a customer might anticipate, Dollar Thrifty was able to frame the issue in realistic terms—essentially, that the tradeoff might be worth the extra $50 spent on gas. Interestingly, Magill notes that the chart remained a rental-counter fixture even after gas prices subsided.

Your Marketing Inspiration: In a shaky economy where customers have become increasingly price conscious, it’s not a bad idea to show them how an upgrade might provide plenty of benefits without breaking the bank.

In a post at the ExactTarget blog, Nate Romance recounts a visit with his tech-savvy mother, a woman who makes frequent online purchases through sites like Craigslist and Amazon. While scanning her email, she became annoyed with a particular message. “If they send me one more stupid email this week,” she said in exasperation, “I’m never going to buy anything from them again.”

According to Romance, his mother shops at this specialty retailer exactly once a year—to buy a birthday gift for his sister. But despite her regular-as-clockwork shopping pattern, she still receives between three and five email messages each week.

The problem, says Romance, is when companies like this place more importance on omnipresence than relevance. “One marketer actually told me that they considered an unopened, unclicked email to be a net positive for their brand,” he says. “Instead of looking at what they are gaining by sending so frequently, this company should probably be looking at what they are losing from this practice.”

He suggests a better practice: “Adjusting frequency based on previous purchase behavior shows that you understand your customers, you respect them, and you’ll be there for them when they’re ready.”

The Po!nt: Cool it. Pay close attention to customer preferences. No one benefits from bombarding subscribers with a scattershot email strategy.

Source: ExactTarget. Read the full post here.

It’s always good to pause for reflection, and Mark Brownlow of Email Marketing Reports has grouped 27 questions you might ask yourself into thematic categories, along with links to insightful blog posts and articles that address each topic.

Under the heading of coping with increased competition, he poses thought-provoking queries like:

• What do your emails offer that people can’t get from any other email list?
• If a competitor started offering the same content or similar offers, why would subscribers stay with your list?

Moving along to recipient fatigue, he asks questions like these:

• Are you controlling the number of emails your subscribers get (not just from you, but from everyone in the organization)?
• Do you think declining responses are best reversed by sending more emails or by building a better email program?

Later on, under the heading of optimized metrics, he wonders:

• Have you considered the email impacts that don’t show up in standard campaign reports?
• When you get an unusually bad or good result, do you shrug and move on or do you search for the lesson and apply them to future emails?

The Po!nt: The self-deprecating Brownlow zeroes in on the bottom line with question number 16. “Are you implementing new tactics because some Englishman in Austria with a blog said they worked or because they make intrinsic sense for your list, audience and email model, or because you tested the ideas and found them beneficial?”

Source: Email Marketing Reports. Click here for the complete post.

In a video post at the Church of the Customer Blog, Jackie Huba and Ben McConnell use the example of a goat-milk carton (that’s right: a goat-milk carton!) to underscore the importance of listening to your customers.

“One thing you have to know about goat’s milk,” explains Huba,” is that the milk solids do go to the bottom and every time you drink it you’ve got to shake it up.” There was, for Huba, only one problem with this procedure—her favored brand used old-fashioned cartons without a screw top, and vigorous shaking sometimes sent milk spraying all over the kitchen. On her last visit to the supermarket, however, she discovered that the dairy not only updated its cartons to the screw top style, it added two words to the packaging: Customer Requested.

“They are basically saying, ‘Hey, we heard you,’” says Huba. “The key is to take those two words, put in on the packaging, and [send the message that] this is a company that really listens to customers.”

According to Huba, there are two ways to listen:

• Passively. This means providing customers with easy ways to give you feedback.
• Actively, by paying attention to what they say in online venues like blogs, forums and tweets.

“Listening is a risk-free strategy overall,” says McConnell in a neat summation of this Marketing Inspiration. “I mean, nothing can harm you by actively listening to what people are saying and feeding that back into the company.”

By Zachary Rodgers, ClickZ, Feb 24, 2009

Yahoo is rolling out some new ad targeting options, including search retargeting for display ads and ads that are dynamically generated based on user activities on advertiser Web sites.

The former targeting feature allows advertisers to capture user interest information from search queries and use that information to generate display ads that can appear anywhere on the Yahoo network. Major online advertiser University of Phoenix used it to achieve an effective cost per lead about equal to that of its search advertising efforts. Rico de Leon, the advertiser’s senior director of media services operations, told Yahoo cost per lead was about 50 percent lower than for display ad behavioral targeting efforts.

Advertisers can also combine Yahoo’s standard behavioral ad tools with data drawn from advertiser sites for highly-customized ad retargeting. In an example shared by Yahoo, people viewing a specific flight offer on an airline Web site can later be served an ad offer for the same flight when they return to pages on the Yahoo network.

Yahoo has offered display ad retargeting based on recent search activity since as far back as 2005 through a product it called Impulse when it launched.

The company also already enables dynamic ad customization through its SmartAds offering, launched in 2007. The product combines information gathered through consumer shopping, searching, and Web surfing behaviors, along with registration information and location data to assemble customized display ad messages.

Additionally, Yahoo is rolling out some new targeting options for search campaigns and ads that appear in Content Match, Yahoo’s network of partner sites. Beginning in March, marketers will be able to specify demographic preferences as well as a time of day and day of the week to run ads when setting up their campaigns. They’ll also be able to vary bids for different audience segments.

Yahoo executives will discuss the new features during an address this morning before fellow publishers at the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s annual meeting in Orlando. Joanne Bradford, Yahoo SVP, U.S. revenue and market development, said the theme of the speech is “10 things that matter,” a list that includes ad size, prices and data.

Also at the IAB summit, Yahoo rival Microsoft yesterday announced it has integrated its many ad networks and properties under a single media brand. Microsoft Media Network will include MSN, Windows Live, Office Live, and XBOX Live; partner sites like Facebook, Viacom, CNBC, and Dow Jones; and the performance-based ad network offerings formerly known as Drive PM and Microsoft Direct Response.

What’s the best way to recession-proof your B2B strategies? Might be wise to follow the lead of the man who coined the phrase “direct marketing.” Lester Wunderman, founder of Wunderman Inc., is a proponent of seizing the day, even when it’s a gray one. Here he shares his latest definition of advertising, for the tough times and the long run. “We have made a commitment to a new global dimension of advertising,” Wunderman reports from his agency. “I call it engagement.”

What is engagement? According to Wunderman, it is the commitment to creating long-term relationships between buyer and seller, business and prospect. This isn’t old-style relationship marketing. Engagement requires ongoing work on the part of your business to stay relevant to prospects and customers. More details:

“Engagement is a promise that carries an obligation by all parties to do something. [And] to continue to do it for each other. It can be in the form of an agreement, contract, or commitment.”

Afraid you’ll seem too B2C if you make that extra call to a B2B customer? Get over it. Pick up the phone, and engage them. Adding interactive elements to your newsletter could help. Or maybe it’s time to start that blog you’ve been thinking about.

“Engagement lives in the now and is [the] most likely [business approach] to continue into the future if properly maintained and nourished,” Wunderman advises.

The Po!nt: Decide how you can be helpful to your prospects and customers. Then offer your insights and support over time. Companies that foster engagement are the ones people will remember.

Source: MarketingProfs. Read the full article here.

My First Day

Working in the Oregon marketplace and in the newspaper industry for the past 15 years has been a great adventure, and very rewarding.  Fabulous incomes are not a part of the scene but great relationships, and rewarding outcomes for advertisers have been a big personal satisfaction. It is a good time to reflect and remember my beginnings in the newspaper business.

The sun was warm and the air clean in downtown Bremerton as I made my way to the front door of The Bremerton Sun.  I cheerfully greeted my new boss Dale Asay in the front classified office and we headed for the grand tour.

First we went to the business office where ten key adding machines were displayed with tubes full of #2 pencils neatly sharpened and ready for action.  Harry Belt was introduced as the Accounting Department Manager.  We then wheeled and moved quickly to proof room, where three elder ladies in print dresses were situated in a close 10 foot by 15 foot area that housed all the proof sheets for review, correction and resetting in the press galley downstairs. (more…)

It’s time to dust off your fishing gear! The opening of Henry Hagg lake is March 7th. This lake is home to some of the largest Trout in Oregon. It is a common sight to see an 8-15 pound Rainbow Trout being weighed at the Lake Stop Grocery, just down the road from the lake.

Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife (ODFW) is scheduled to stock the lake with 18,000 Trout a week prior to the opening. The lake receives more then 70,000 Trout throughout the year. There are also thousands of fish, which are holdovers from the previous years. These fish have not seen any bait or lures since Thanksgiving last year, so they should be ready to attack your line and give you a good fight.

The lake is also home to State Record Smallmouth Bass. The best time to catch one of these beauties is Mid April to the first week of June while they are in the flats during the spawn.

You can also see Bald Eagles and Osprey feeding on the fish in the lake.

The lake is located in Scroggins Valley, just south of Forest Grove, Oregon and off highway 47.

Ken Bear Cole
Fishing with Bear LLC

Another Monday. Another newsletter to crank out. You’ve built a decent subscriber list, and your clients are happy to receive your ramblings. So why aren’t you that happy to produce them? Perhaps you need to give yourself a break. Enter Kevin Sinclair with his Quick Newsletter Tips. Who knew you could do so much less, but serve clients more? Three new features to consider:

Tip of the Week. Want to cut word count and boost readership in one step? Showcase a Tip of the Week. “You can easily brainstorm enough content for six months of weekly newsletters (you need to come up with 24 tips, which you will present weekly),” Sinclair reports.

Checklists. A good checklist is like a step-by-step how-to. Turn a lengthy advice column into one. “Checklists can save a lot of time, and your readers will be delighted to get one,” he says.

Before-and-Afters. “Who doesn’t like makeovers?” Sinclair asks. This is a great way to interact with clients. “[I]nvite them to send in details of whatever needs a makeover: an article, a website page, their wardrobe, then [briefly] present … solutions.” Or ask for examples of their own in-house makeovers. Let them write for you!

Finally, to regularly feed yourself new ideas, Sinclair suggests you “set up an address at Yahoo or gmail just for newsletters.” Subscribe away. Then visit the mailbox periodically to see what’s out there.

The Po!nt: Cut the blabber. Highlight and tighten client newsletter copy; it will give you a break and serve them better.

Source: How-To B2Barticles. Read the full article here.

According to Justin Hitt, B2B sales teams routinely get it wrong when seeking new customers. “The problem is, not every sales person knows who makes a good client,” he explains. Among the common errors he sees:

Chasing too many prospects. “Successful sales people focus on highly qualified prospects most likely to close,” Hitt says.

Not chasing enough prospects. The reverse is true as well, he says. Prospecting should be a daily activity.

Not testing enough. If you aren’t continuously testing, “you’ll likely stop pursuing great customers out of indifference,” he predicts.

To avoid falling into these traps, Hitt urges B2B marketers to follow a basic prospecting formula: identify, challenge and qualify to close.

• Identify your ideal customers using specific criteria that are important to you. Then “pre-qualify every lead with a well-designed marketing campaign,” he advises.
• Challenge your assumptions by really understanding your customers. Carry on an ongoing dialogue with them, showing real interest in what matters to them.
• Qualify a good prospect as the ideal user of your solution, until it’s obvious that their only choice is to buy. This beats the hard sell every time.

Nurture leads and educate prospects, Hitt advises, instead of “pitching them with endless dribble about your organization.”

The Po!nt: Ditch the sales pitch. Instead, take a real interest in the companies you contact. This approach will serve them well, and help you clearly identify your hottest prospects.

Source: Ask Justin Hitt Blog. Read the full post here.